Hunt for models: Brazilians rally for non-whites

Yet Brazil is not the same country it was in 1994,when Gisele Bündchen,the worlds top earning model,was discovered. Darker-skinned women have become more prominent,challenging the notions of Brazilian beauty that Bündchen represents.

Taís Araújo just finished a run as the first black female lead in the coveted 8 pm soap opera slot. Marina Silva,a former government minister,is running for president. And over the decade,the income of black Brazilians rose by about 40 per cent,more than double the rate of whites,said Marcelo Neri,an economist.

São Paulo Fashion Week has been forced by prosecutors to ensure that at least 10 per cent of its models are of African or indigenous descent. Despite those shifts,more than half of Brazils models continue to be found here among farms of Rio Grande do Sul,a state that has only one-twentieth of the nations population and was colonised predominantly by Germans and Italians.

On pages of its magazines,Brazils beauty spectrum is clearer. Non-white women are interspersed with white models. But on runways diversity drops off precipitously. Prosecutors investigating discrimination complaints against São Paulo Fashion Week found that only 28 of the events 1,128 models were black in early 2008.

The pattern creates a disconnect between what many Brazilians consider beautiful and the beauty they export overseas. I was always perplexed that Brazil was never able to export a Naomi Campbell,and it is definitely not because of a lack of pretty women, said Erika Palomino,a fashion consultant in São Paulo. It is embarrassing.